


Son of the (Very Alien) Sea

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ableism, Alien Mermaids, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Everything is the same except Lance is from the mermaid planet, Gen, Kind of? It's discussed a lot, Male Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Trans Character, Trans Hunk (Voltron), Trans Keith (Voltron), mermaid lance (voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 01:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11772906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: In which everything is the same, except Lance was born on the mermaid planet.(And Blue was left there, too.)





	Son of the (Very Alien) Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by this art (though not by the concept written underneath): http://phoenixyfriend.tumblr.com/post/162392933753/fangirltothefullest-i-wanted-to-draw-merlance  
> This fic's Lance doesn't look exactly like that, but he's similar.
> 
> Warnings: There's some discussion regarding how pronouns are gendered in English. The fic is from Hunk's POV, and Pidge hasn't come out yet (I headcanon her as a trans girl), so Hunk refers to her with he/him pronouns. This fic also ended up taking a significant detour through some unexpected territory while I was writing. I ended up addressing a lot of things in Lance's experiences on the Castle that closely parallel the experiences of disabled people, to the point where I thought it prudent to include some terminology that I'd seen used specifically in regards to that community (e.g. adaptive devices). I myself do not have a physical disability. I've probably made a number of mistakes in how I phrased or framed things. Please see end notes for more details.

Hunk had followed along with the supposed plan as well as he mostly could… and as much as there _was_ a plan.

Follow Pidge because he was worried about the kid’s mental state? Check.

Find Keith while trying to rescue Shiro for Pidge’s sake? Also check. Hi, Keith, nice to see you again. Thanks for dropping out right after getting assigned as Hunk’s partner and leaving him with a stranger he could barely talk to as his pilot instead.

Running off to Keith’s shack in the desert and subsequently finding a _giant yellow robot cat_ in a cave? Check.

Get talked into entering the _giant yellow robot cat_ by the others, and then get dragged out to the edge of the solar system by said robot cat’s autopilot? Check. Unfortunately.

Go through a wormhole, find a castle, and wake up some aliens from a cryogenic sleep? Check.

Get assigned lions and then sent off to find the other giant robot cats? Check.

The part where Hunk got lost was the part where they _did not_ have a blue paladin, and this apparently meant that the chances of the blue lion coming along were slim.

“The Blue Lion has always been the friendliest of the five, and she’s fairly reasonable…” Allura had said, biting her lip with apparent worry. “If you just speak with her, I’m sure you can get her to agree to a temporary piloting situation, or to even follow you back to the castle on her own. She can’t do much complex maneuvering without a pilot, but she can fly, at least.”

“And once we _do_ get back here?” Hunk had asked. “What then? Do we just use four lions?”

Allura had tried (and failed) to look collected. “I will attempt to pilot her until an appropriate paladin is located. Actually, I should probably give you paladin uniforms… the Blue Lion is most likely underwater, from what I know of the planet, and you won’t survive the transfer without them…”

Right. So. That was about the scope of things.

Hunk was having a very long day.

“Do we even know where it is?” Keith asked, leaning over Hunk’s shoulder as they circled the ice planet. That was another awkward thing: Hunk piloting. Hunk wasn’t a pilot. He’d never wanted to _be_ a pilot. It was stressful, and he wasn’t very good at it.

“I think… I could maybe ask the Yellow Lion?” Hunk offered, because that had to count for something, right? “Maybe the lions can like… sense each other when they’re close enough.”

“Worth a shot,” Keith said, shrugging. “Think you can break through the ice?”

A low, rumbling purr rolled through Hunk’s mind, and he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can.”

“Do it.”

So he did it.

The ice snapped away easily beneath Yellow’s giant bulk, and while Hunk sensed a degree of discomfort from Yellow, they didn’t end up lacking maneuverability, so that was nice. Hunk let Yellow sink to the floor, silently asking his lion what to do, and found attention being turned to a button on the dashboard.

The lion had headlights. Okay. That was actually pretty useful.

“So…” Hunk fidgeted. “Yellow? Can you tell us where the Blue Lion is?”

He didn’t get an answer.

“Let’s try going outsi—what was that?” Keith cut himself off, and Hunk didn’t need to ask why.

He swung Yellow’s head around, trying to follow the colorful streak that passed by in front of them a few times.

He looked at Keith, and after a few moments said, “Maybe they’ll know something?”

“I’ll go,” Keith said instead. “If something goes wrong, it means you’re in your lion to help.”

“Works for me. Try not to stab unprovoked.”

“Not funny!” Keith called, but he didn’t sound more than a little irritated, so Hunk chalked it up as a win.

Keith floated up in front of the Yellow Lion, and after a few long moments, the flash of color reappeared. This time, it stayed.

“Is that a _mermaid?”_ Hunk asked, gaping a little. “Er, merman? Merperson?”

Keith ignored him, and Hunk listened as Keith tried to establish a line of communication.

“Uh… hi?”

Nice job, Keith.

The merperson said something back, and Keith sounded relieved when he spoke again. “You’re saying you’ve seen something like this?”

After a moment, he ground out, “Keith. My name is _Keith_ , not alien boy.”

The merperson pretty obviously laughed, and then circled Keith a few times. Hunk wasn’t surprised that he’d had difficulty keeping track of them earlier; the merperson’s color scheme was so very full of blue and teal that they were hard to keep track of in the water.

“Listen, can you just take us to the other lion?”

The merperson paused, then turned to face Yellow and swam closer, floating mere inches from the lion and frowning.

“Uh…” Hunk leaned back a little from the merperson’s seemingly unseeing eyes. They tilted their head and blinked, a nictitating membrane that flicked over sideways for a split moment. They spun to look at Keith again.

“I’m not sure what you were expecting,” Keith said. “It’s a light, not a window.”

After a few more moments where the merperson kept talking, swimming back over to Keith, Keith sighed. “Fine. Hunk! Get out here! This guy says he can show us where the Blue Lion is, but he wants some help for some stuff after.”

“What kind of stuff?” Hunk asked, though he was already getting to his feet.

“Something called mind-swishing? It sounds like some kind of mass brain-washing thing.”

“That… does not sound fun.”

“No shit.”

Hunk knew that the water wasn’t going to get through his suit, but it was still something of a shock that he wasn’t immediately freezing when he dropped into the water. There barely a discernible change in temperature at all, really.

He found himself face to face with the merperson, floating in front of him with a grin.

“Hi! I’m Lance.” They tilted their head, hornlike appendages on their forehead and hair swaying in the current. “Hunk, right?”

“Yeah…” Hunk stared for a moment longer, trying to take in the truly alien features in front of him. “Sorry, but, uh, what are your pronouns?”

It had been easy with Allura. Coran had referred to her as ‘Princess,’ which was enough of a gendered term that Hunk had felt comfortable going with she/her off the bat. The way she and Coran referenced each other made it clear pretty quickly that the way they presented was accurate to their pronouns, or whatever the alien equivalent was.

“My… pronouns?” Lance questioned, head tilted.

“You don’t have pronouns?”

“We have pronouns. I just don’t understand what you mean by _my_ pronouns,” Lance explained, swimming around Hunk slowly.

“Uh, well, back home a lot of pronouns are gendered. And using the wrong pronoun is kind of rude, in a lot of cases,” Hunk said.

“Huh,” Lance’s stopped, head tilting again. “Pronouns aren’t gendered like that for us. We have genders, but they don’t influence _pronouns_. That’s just… weird.”

“Oh. Um. I could use a non-gendered pronoun?” Hunk offered.

“No, no, I’m okay with something associated with a gender! I just don’t know if our genders are the same as yours!”

“Well, what would you say you are?”

“Sketex,” Lance said promptly, which explained precisely nothing.

“That… is not translating,” Hunk said. “So your genders probably don’t align to ours. I could just go back to gender-neutral pronouns.”

“Okay, question time, to get this over with,” Keith interrupted. “Only elaborate if you think you actually need to. Otherwise answer as shortly as you can. Are your genders based around reproductive biology?”

“Originally.”

“Do you identify as the gender that’s traditionally associated with the genitalia you were born with?”

“Yeah,” Lance nodded.

“Does your species’ reproductive system involve a penetrative inseminator as one party while the other party either gestates the child or lays eggs?”

“The eggs,” Lance confirmed. “But I’m an inseminator.”

“Then by our planet’s standards, you’re probably a cisgender man,” Keith said. “In which case, he/him pronouns would be the ones you’d probably be using if you were human. Everyone okay with that?”

Lance and Hunk both nodded, and Hunk felt a significant degree of relief that Keith was as blunt as he was. He’d handled that a lot faster than Hunk could have.

“I’m a trans guy, by the way,” Keith said. “Since we’re already talking about gender.”

“Same,” Hunk added. “Though it isn’t re—”

“Let’s get moving,” Keith said before they could get distracted again.

“You might want to make sure that no one can take your ship,” Lance said. “Can you do that? I don’t want that thing getting taken by Queen Luxia.”

Yellow put up his barrier, and Hunk turned back to Lance and shrugged.

“Which way?” Keith asked, already sounding annoyed again.

“Follow me,” Lance said, turning and dashing away with a flick of his tail. After a moment, Hunk and Keith figured out which buttons to press to activate their jetpacks so they could actually keep up. Then Lance decided to try to make small-talk.

“So you were… born as the kind to lay eggs?” Lance asked, tilting his head again and looking back at them. “That’s what ‘trans’ means, right? Or is that translation thing not working right? I know some people who were told they were Gallis when they were kids, but identify as Sketex. Or the other way around. Is this the same thing?”

“Humans gestate unborn children,” Hunk said. “We don’t lay eggs. That’s more… birds and lizards and fish.”

“Huh,” Lance said, twisting around to look backwards at them, barely slowing down. “Just carry the baby inside your body until it’s born?”

“Yes, well, that’s what a pregnancy _is_ ,” Keith said. “And I hope to never go through it.”

“It doesn’t sound comfortable,” Lance mused. “I can understand why you want to avoid it. Anyway, we’re almost there!”

He darted down through the water towards a small, dark hole in the ocean floor. Keith and Hunk exchanged a look and followed.

“Plaxum and I were messing around and trying to learn weapons here a few years ago,” Lance said, his voice echoing strangely off the walls through the water. “Her throw went _way_ wide one time, and we found this. The carvings started glowing and stuff, so of _course_ we went to figure out what was happening, right? Anyway, we swam down and found something that looks a lot like the ship you came down in, but blue instead of yellow.”

“Plaxum?” Hunk asked.

“The carvings were _glowing?”_ Keith demanded.

“Yeah, Plaxum’s my best frie—”

“No, go back to the carvings!” Keith said. “You’re sure they were glowing?”

“Uh…” Lance drifted to a halt. “Yeah?”

“Did Blue put up a barrier like Yellow?” Hunk asked, catching on.

“I mean, the ship had a barrier thing when we got there, and Plaxum couldn’t get through, but it went right down when I tapped on it?” Lance tilted his head and stared at them. “Why?”

“Has the Blue Lion _talked_ to you?” Keith asked carefully.

“Kind of? I don’t think she likes words, but sometimes she sends me ideas and stuff,” Lance looked between the two of them a few times. “This is important, isn’t it?”

“Did she ever suggest something about you flying her?” Hunk asked. If she had… and Blue had already _found_ her paladin…

“She kept saying it’s not the right time yet,” Lance said, pouting for a moment before brightening. “Hey, do you think she was waiting for you guys? Can I go to space with you? I want to see what things look like from way up high!”

“I think she’s chosen you as her pilot, so… probably,” Hunk said. “Can you breathe outside of the water?”

“It’s not comfortable, but yeah.” Lance wriggled in the water a little. “So I’m going to space?”

“Probably.”

Lance squealed and spun on the spot, darting away through the water again. “Come on!”

They did their best to keep up.

It was obvious, at least, that Lance hadn’t been lying. The Blue Lion was sitting at the bottom of the cave, lit up by the blowing carvings and exuding such a presence that it was hard to imagine that she _wasn’t_ awake.

“How did she get down here?” Hunk muttered, looking around at the walls and questioning reality for a bit. There were not, in fact, any obvious openings through which the lion could have gotten in.

“It’s been ten thousand years,” Keith suggested. “Might have shifted the rocks a bit.”

The barrier dropped as soon as Lance knocked on it, and Hunk and Keith came closer as Lance seemed to listen to something only he could hear. He turned to them with a wide grin. “She says I can fly her now! She _was_ waiting for you guys!”

“Cool, but can we please get out of here?” Hunk shifted a bit. “We… do kind of have a war to fight.”

“Oooooh, right. Okay.” Lance thought for a moment. “Plaxum’s gonna tail-slap _my_ tail so hard for disappearing if I don’t tell her, though.”

Hunk figured that was the local variant on ‘she’s gonna kick my ass’ or something.

“We’ll talk Princess Allura into helping you come back and get some things done as soon as we’re done at the Castle of Lions,” Keith promised. “She seems like the kind of person to take promises and duty pretty seriously, and we promised to help you fix whatever your planet’s issue is, right?”

Lance grinned at them. “Okay! And hey, Plaxum’s probably going to figure out what I’m doing once she realizes that something’s going on with the spaceship, right?”

“Lion. It’s a lion,” Keith corrected. “I mean, yes, it’s a spaceship. But the animal it’s based on is a lion, so we just call them the lions.”

“Mm… okay!” And then Lance turned on his tail and swam up into the Blue Lion’s mouth.

 “So… this is the last paladin,” Keith muttered.

“He seems pretty eager, at least?” Hunk said. “And Blue really likes him?”

Keith shrugged, and the two of them swam up into the cockpit of the lion.

“Okay, this is weird,” Hunk said. The lion’s head was thankfully filled with air, even if it was kind of hot and humid, but there was approximately no gravity whatsoever.

“Accommodations for the lack of legs,” Keith decided, pulling himself along towards the pilot’s seat, which did not look quite like a chair, given the obtuse angle between the chair back and the seat. More changes for the fact that Lance was a mermaid, probably.

“I can’t wait to finally try these out,” Lance crooned, running his hands along the buttons. “The, uh, lions? The lions. They just tell you what to do, right?”

Keith and Hunk exchanged a look, because a pilot who had no idea how to pilot was… not an expected setback. Even Pidge and Hunk had _some_ idea of how to fly.

“Yep,” Keith finally said, voice cracking. “They should tell you exactly what you need to do.”

 _We are going to die_ , his eyes said.

“Just trust the lion,” Hunk suggested, patting Lance on the shoulder.

“Okay! Let’s see how this baby swims!” And with that, Lance put the thrusters to full power and burst out of the cave.

This was not a good idea.

Hunk gripped the handle sticking out of the wall, trying not to throw up. The zero gravity meant there was at least a little less outright jostling, but Lance was clearly urging Blue to swim the way Lance himself did, which involved a number of fancy twirls and spins and various other things that made Hunk feel more than a little queasy. Keith seemed to notice, at least, even over the sound of Lance’s delighted whooping.

“Listen, take us over to where we left the Yellow Lion,” Keith said, just loud enough to cut past Lance’s excitement. “So Hunk can get back in and pilot him out.”

“What about you?” Lance asked.

“I’ll stay in here. Princess Allura’s probably going to be more comfortable with you piloting if she sees someone she’s already met with you,” Keith said.

 _Also, Hunk is going to throw up, and you have no idea what you’re doing while I’m a piloting prodigy that can keep you from doing something extra stupid_ , was the silent continuation that Hunk figured Keith wanted to say, though Lance didn’t seem to notice.

“Swishy,” Lance said, and aimed Blue for where they’d left Yellow. There were more merfolk in the area, maybe guards or something, going by the spears they held, but they scattered as Blue roared out a challenge. Lance laughed, a noise that was peppered with high-pitched squeaks like echolocation.

“You’re really enjoying this,” Keith muttered. Hunk moved away and headed for the exit. After a few moments, the Blue Lion let him out, and some surprisingly well-aimed laser fire kept the guards from closing in on him.

He made it to Yellow, and then shut down all outside access as soon as he got back to the cockpit. The holographic screens flickered on, and he connected with the Blue Lion after a moment.

“—stop jerking us around like that?” Keith was yelling.

“But I have to dodge the spears!” Lance protested.

“The Blue Lion is big enough that the spears aren’t going to hurt her,” Keith said. “Just follow Hunk into the air, okay?”

“…we’ll come back later, right?” Lance asked, his voice very small.

Keith met Hunk’s eyes in the screen, then shut his own and sighed. “I already told you: we’ll talk to the Princess. She’ll probably okay it.”

“It’s just… there’s _stuff_ going on, and a lot of people have died already, and there’s only a handful of us trying to fix things left,” Lance said. “If I leave, there might not be _anyone_ , if Plaxum and Blumfump and Swirn get captured.”

 _Only a handful_ , Hunk repeated mentally, feeling a little sick to his stomach for reasons that had nothing to do with motion sickness for once.

“Does it have to do with the Galra?” Keith asked.

Lance shook his head. “No.”

“…we’ll come back,” Keith promised. “Soon, too.”

“We need to go _now_ , though,” Hunk said, turning Yellow towards the lighter waters and gunning it. “Come on!”

The Blue Lion beat Yellow to the hole in the ice, and spun around to face it again after flying up a few hundred miles. Hunk felt a little smile cross his face as he saw Lance staring down at the massive water planet in sheer wonder.

“That’s my home?” He whispered, staring down at it through the Blue Lion’s eyes. “That’s… I can’t even see the hole we came up through!”

“Yeah, planets tend to be kind of big,” Hunk said. “Turn your lion around, though.”

“Stars, right?” Lance looked around with wide eyes, no pupil or sclera to be seen, not through a video feed. “I haven’t seen them in years…”

“Why not?” Keith asked.

“…the ice didn’t always cover this much of the planet,” Lance said quietly. “But the queen closed the vents when the mind-swishing started.”

Hunk wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

o.o.o.o.o

“Hunk?” Keith asked, sounding suspiciously calm. “Can you come over here and help me for a moment?”

“Uh, yeah?” Hunk landed Yellow in his hangar and got up to head for where he could see Blue. “What’s up?”

“Well, Lance doesn’t have legs,” Keith said. “And there’s gravity and air outside of Blue.”

“…oh. Riiiiight.”

“Lance can’t walk, and I’m not strong enough to carry him until we figure out some kind of… adaptive device? Whatever. Point is, you’ve got muscles and I need to borrow them if we’re going to get him up to the bridge.”

“I’ll be over there as soon as I can be,” Hunk promised, already trying to figure out a solution for the long-term. The Alteans probably had wheelchairs or something, right? Unless their medical technology meant that they had other options for people who were born with congenital limb differences or had to amputate their legs, and had such advanced prosthetics or… or the ability to repair spinal injuries or whatever that wheelchairs weren’t usually necessary? Or, hell, maybe there was a lot of ableism on Altea and wheelchairs weren’t considered a ‘proper’ thing; Hunk didn’t know what kinds of prejudices had been common there. Or… oooooh, maybe some kind of hover device? Localized disruption of gravity that only affected Lance, or… well, something that lifted just specific points would probably be painful. A full distribution of weight on the hover tech would be ideal if anti-grav fields weren’t possible.

“Are you daydreaming again?”

Hunk blinked and looked up, realizing he was already in front of the Blue Lion again. “Oh, uh, sorry. Just got caught up thinking about how we could make localized anti-grav fields or something for Lance?”

Keith blinked. “I’d be absolutely useless for anything about engineering, so… maybe talk to Pidge on that front.”

“Right,” Hunk said, and climbed up towards Blue’s cockpit. Lance floated in the doorway, watching in fascination as he stuck his own hand in and out of the doorway. “Having fun?”

“I’m trying to see if it’s a solid line or like… a gradient,” Lance said, looking up at Hunk. “Gravity doesn’t work in here. It does work out there. But I can’t tell if it’s all at once or a slow change over a few aquameters.”

Hunk blinked. “I’m guessing it’s probably gradual?”

Lance made a face. “Just a guess?”

“I don’t really know,” Hunk said, shrugging. “Maybe we can ask Coran. Do you mind if I carry you up?”

“There’s no way up for me alone?” Lance asked, reaching out with both hands to hold on to the doorframe. He didn’t seem to expect a positive answer.

“Not that we know of,” Hunk said, apologetic. “But we can probably ask Coran and Allura once we get upstairs. They’d know. If they don’t have anything, then I’m pretty sure there’s enough random tech lying around for me and Pidge to make something?”

Lance made a face. “I don’t want to need help.”

“Yeah, that can… that can suck,” Hunk admitted. His only experience on that front had been when he’d broken his leg in middle school and needed some help getting around, but he’d read enough articles by people who were permanently wheelchair-bound or otherwise disabled to know how much having to rely on other people _sucked._ “I promise we’ll figure out something as soon as possible?”

Lance eyed him for a moment, and then nodded rapidly. “Okay. I trust you.”

 _You barely know me_ , Hunk almost said, but was a little sidetracked by the way Lance suddenly flung himself out of the room and into his arms.

“Ooph!”

“Hi!” Lance practically chirped, grinning up at Hunk. “Let’s go!”

“…you bounce back fast,” Hunk finally said, turning around and heading for the stairs that would take him down to the ramp.

Lance shrugged. “No use in brooding, right? You said you’d do something to let me get around on my own, so I can wait a bit while you do that.”

“Might take a while,” Hunk said as they got to the ramp. “Hey, Keith.”

“Hey.”

“…I can be patient,” Lance said.

Hunk accepted that, and headed out of Blue. “Anything else we need to account for? Lighting, the air, anything like that?”

“I can breathe your air,” Lance confirmed, “The lights are a little strong, though. Very pale.”

“Sunglasses,” Hunk said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to make those, at least, if we can’t find them. We can probably find tinted goggles, though.”

“I might get used to them?” Lance suggested.

“We’ll keep it in mind,” Hunk said. “Also, please stop wriggling around like that. It’s making it very hard to keep hold of you.”

At least the uniform meant that the water on Lance’s rubbery skin wasn’t soaking into Hunk’s clothing. That was a good thing.

“Sorry,” Lance said. “Oh, I realized, in the Lion…”

“Yes?” Keith prompted.

“The air is very hard to swim through,” Lance finished. “There’s less… resistance?”

“…might be able to work around that if I do the anti-grav right,” Hunk said after a long moment. “Might have to include some kind of propulsion system?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Keith said. He sounded dismissive, but Hunk had figured out a while back that that was mostly just Keith’s difficulty with communication. The actual words were more important, and to Hunk, those words were basically Keith’s version of ‘you can totally do this, I believe in you.’

“How will I sleep?” Lance asked, blinking up at Hunk. “ _Where_ will I sleep?”

“I…” Hunk blanked. “I have no idea. We haven’t even gotten our own rooms yet. Do you need water to sleep?”

“No… but it’s more comfortable,” Lance said, pouting. He turned glistening eyes in Hunk’s direction. “And I’d like to breathe through my gills. And it’s cold in the air.”

“Are you cold-blooded?” Keith asked. “Or does your body self-regulate temperature?”

Lance blinked at him. “Uh…”

“Does your body make at least some of its own heat, so we can give you layers to wear when you’re cold, or is your body temperature almost entirely dictated by the environment?” Hunk rephrased.

“Oh! Um… the first. I think.” Lance frowned. “Never really needed to worry about it; the vents kept us warm, and then the Baku Garden.”

“The what?” Hunk asked.

“The…” Lance bit his lip, considering. “There’s a garden, and it wasn’t there before the mindswishing started, and it wasn’t there before the vents were closed. So…”

“You think it has something to do with the brainwashing,” Keith said, nodding. “Makes sense.”

“Yeah…” Lance said, his eyes on the tip of his tail, which swung back and forth beneath him, just barely brushing Hunk’s knees with every step. “So, um, about the cold?”

“We can probably get you some sweaters or something for the heat issue,” Hunk said. “Not pants, obviously, but is it really bad, or just a few degrees?”

“I don’t know,” Lance said, making a face. “Being outside of the water this long is _weird_.”

“Blue wouldn’t have picked you if she thought she’d be ruining your life by doing it,” Keith said. “If you couldn’t comfortably live in the Castle, she’d probably have just waited for us, right?”

“Here’s hoping,” Hunk muttered. “Aaaaaaand here we are at the bridge. Keith, could you…”

Keith took a moment to realize what the problem was, then went “oh,” and ducked around Hunk to press his palm to the scanner that would make the door open, seeing as Hunk did not have the free hands to do so himself.

The door whooshed open.

“Hunk, Keith, we were ju—” Allura cut herself off, staring. “Who is that?”

“Blue apparently decided on a new paladin way before we got there,” Hunk said.

“Hi, I’m Lance!” He introduced himself, waving with one hand and flapping his tail back and forth a few times. “And you’re _gorgeous_ , what’s your name?”

It took a few moments for that to process.

Keith groaned and buried his face in his hands. Hunk kind of wished he could do the same. Unfortunately, his hands were currently full of merboy.

“Wow,” Pidge drawled, adjusting his glasses. “Just… wow.”

Hunk stared at Lance’s bright smile, and then up at the confused and somewhat irritated princess.

“If it’s any consolation,” Keith said, sounding a little dead inside. “He flirted with me about two lines into me asking if he’d seen the lions before.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Lance protested, pouting at Allura. “You _are_ gorgeous.”

“What did you call Keith, then?” Pidge asked, because he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Pretty,” Lance said promptly.

“Okay, moving on,” Shiro said, raising both hands. “You guys are certain that… Lance, is it? That Lance is Blue’s paladin?”

“She talked to him in his head, so…” Hunk shrugged, though he regretted it after a moment when he realized that he’d jostled Lance. “Yeah, he’s it.”

“Well,” Allura said, apparently deciding to ignore the earlier flirting. “Having a paladin for the Blue Lion will allow me to control the Castle from here, so this is good.”

“Um,” Hunk said lowly, so that only Keith and Lance could hear, from how close they were, as Allura kept talking about how they’d apparently found the Red Lion on a Galra ship in orbit. “My arms are getting kind of tired.”

Lance looked up at him in confusion. “So put me down? There are chairs.”

Which… well, okay, then. Hunk wasn’t sure why he’d expected Lance to object to the idea of Hunk not being able to carry him anymore, but it was, in hindsight, a kind of silly thing to expect.

Allura’s eyes followed them, but she didn’t comment on it when Hunk levered Lance down into the chair with lights that were tinted faintly blue. Hunk could see that the other… consoles? The other consoles had similar lights, all in lions’ colors, so they were probably meant to sit in the ones that—

A call came in.

“Princess Allura, this is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire.”

Hunk felt his stomach dropping towards his toes, nausea rising in its place, as the fuzzy purple guy with the robot eye kept talking.

Today was only getting longer.

o.o.o.o.o

So the eventual decision was to fight. Hunk’s sore arms got a bit of a break as Shiro offered to carry Lance up, when Allura told them they were going to get their uniforms and weapons now. Lance hadn’t seemed all that happy about it, but Coran had mentioned something about finding a hoverchair or something until they could work out something even _more_ portable that would maybe do the whole localized anti-grav thing that Hunk had been thinking about, and that had been enough to get Lance interested. It had been enough to get Hunk interested too, honestly; he wanted to know more about how the hover tech that Coran had access to worked.

“Um,” Lance said, as Shiro paused in front of the Blue Paladin uniform pod.

Hunk looked over and… yeah.

“The previous paladins were all bipedal,” Allura said apologetically. “However, the paladin suit _should_ change to suit the needs of the paladin. It’s certainly changed sizes for paladins before.”

“Changing sizes isn’t exactly the same as accommodating a tail,” Keith muttered, eyeing the armor in Lance’s tube like he was trying to imagine it change shape until it could.

Lance seemed to decide that it was time to take matters into his own hands, as he leaned forward to the point of almost toppling out of Shiro’s arms as he reached for the armor. Shiro opened his mouth to say something, closed it again as he seemed to think better, and then just took a step closer to the pod so Lance could actually pull the armor out.

Hunk had a little trouble seeing from over where he was, in front of the pod that had earlier held the yellow armor, but he thought he could see the fabric shifting unnaturally, and there was a flash of light that did… something?

“Oh!” Lance said, sounding delighted.

“Well, that certainly looks helpful,” Shiro said.

“Put me down?” Lance asked, just this side of outright ordering (which was fair, really). Hunk stopped paying attention when it became clear that Lance was apparently going to fit into the uniform that had somehow modified itself for his use, ignoring the way the merboy was wriggling on the floor while pulling on the fabric.

“Do your people often wear clothing?” Allura asked at one point.

“In the winters,” Lance said, sounding distracted. “But not usually. There’s no point.”

“Do you… require help?” Allura asked, her voice belaying her concern.

“No, I’m good,” Lance said, and Hunk turned around in time to see Lance sitting up and somehow reaching around to press the back of his suit shut. It didn’t have a zipper or anything, just seamlessly joined together when pressed, because apparently Altean fabric was magic. The armor was the same as everyone else’s on the upper body, but had some kind of sectioned plating in place for the front and back of his tail, and an odd-looking section of armor with protruding jet spouts that clipped in around the fin at the end of his tail. “That’s… heavy, though.”

“If I might suggest,” Allura said, looking him over carefully. “Press the blue button on your belt?”

Lance blinked up at her, and then back down to where there was indeed a brightly glowing blue button on his belt, much like the other armors. Hunk was pretty sure, though, that the rest of them wouldn't start floating if they pressed the buttons on their armor.

“Oh!” Lance exclaimed, twisting around himself in an attempt to see what was going on for sure. He excitedly flicked his tail a few times, and then drooped in place when he barely moved. “Oh.”

“The belt will allow for you to have a localized field of zero-gravity. The button tends to have a different effect depending on the paladin, but the armor seems to have processed that mobility is a chief concern right now.” Allura said, ignoring Hunk’s little ‘I knew it!’ She bit her lip as she looked at Lance, who spun around in the air a little. “If I’m not mistaken, your primary mode of propulsion while in the air should be your jetpack. It will likely take some time to get used to, but it will allow you independent movement while fighting.”

“Huh,” Lance said, looking down at himself. “So… how do I do that?”

“Well…” Allura stepped closer and grabbed Lance’s shoulder, stilling him. She checked over his armor some more. “There are additional jets on the backs of your wrists, your hips, and parts of your tail. That should be enough to enable full mobility once you’ve learned to use them fully?”

“And if they stop working?” Lance asked quietly.

“…then that’s what you have a full team for,” Allura declared after a moment of silence. “Here, let me show you how to activate those jets…”

o.o.o.o.o

The battle with Sendak wasn’t actually all that hard, Hunk would realize a few months down the road. It felt difficult at the time, but It was absurdly easy compared to a lot of what they ended up doing later on.

What Hunk learned, for the most part, was that while Lance’s technical skill with piloting was minimal, he _was_ much more accustomed to thinking in three-dimensional space than the rest of them. Even Shiro and Keith had needed to _learn_ how to fight in space. Lance had spent his entire life underwater, where thinking in three-dimensions was not only natural, but necessary.

o.o.o.o.o

Hunk watched as Lance whooshed back and forth between the lions and the entrance to the Castle, a distance that got a little shorter every time as the team got closer.

“Would you _stop?”_ Keith asked.

“I’m still getting used to the floaty stuff!” Lance protested. Considering the way he was wobbling about as he travelled, this was more than true. “And I’m happy! We did good! I even remember your names now!”

“You didn’t before?” Pidge asked, sounding more amused than offended.

Lance paused in his frantic hovering and looked at him. “I just met you.”

“That’s fair,” Pidge allowed, hiding a smile with minimal success.

Allura burst through the doors. “Good work, paladins!”

Lance looked at her with a grin as he pulled off his helmet, frond-like blue hair flopping about as he turned to float upside-down. “Thanks, pretty lady.”

“We did it,” Shiro said.

Keith pulled off his helmet and offered Shiro a grin. “Heck yeah, we did.”

“How did we do it?” Shiro asked.

Hunk offered his own suggestion. “I was just, like, screaming the whole time. Maybe that did it.”

Shiro almost answered, but got distracted by Pidge. He put a hand on Pidge’s shoulder. “We're not going to stop searching until we find your brother and father. Wherever they are, I know they'd be proud of you.”

Which… uh… Pidge’s family was in space? Okay. That was a thing. Probably the Holts, then. Maybe Gunderson came from a stepparent or something.

Allura grabbed their attention again. “We won the battle, but the war has only just begun. I'm afraid Zarkon will not stop until he gets these lions.”

“Good thing you paladins know what you're doing,” Coran said, making absolutely nobody feel better. “Because you're going to have to form Voltron again and again.”

“Totally,” Hunk said before the words caught up with him. “Wait, what?”

Lance chipped in, “We barely survived forming Voltron this one time.”

Coran didn’t seem to take that as any kind of excuse. “And you only had to fight one ship. Wait until you have to fight a whole fleet of them! It's not going to be easy being the Defenders of the Universe.”

Shiro huffed out a laugh. “Defenders of the Universe, huh? That's got a nice ring to it.”

o.o.o.o.o

“I see,” Allura said, bringing up the star map again. Hunk watched as she gestured and made one of the planets change color. “This is your planet. It shouldn’t be too difficult to reach, even without the help of a wormhole. I suppose that, given the promise that Keith and Hunk made, it wouldn’t be right to refrain from helping. You’ve said that the queen is responsible for the mindswishing?”

“That’s what Blumfump thinks,” Lance said, swimming up through the air towards the little planet that glowed green. “I don’t agree.”

“What do you think it is, then?” Coran asked.

“The garden,” Lance said, turning to face them. He overshot the turn a little, and then spent a few long seconds trying to get the jets to work with him. Hunk stepped forward and held up a hand, and after a moment, Lance seemed to accept that the jets weren’t going to cooperate, and just grabbed onto Hunk’s hand to still himself instead. It seemed that _moving_ was a lot easier than _stopping_ for Lance. “There’s… they call it the Baku Garden. It showed up before the mindswishing started, and when someone breaks a rule, they get sent to swim through the garden, and then they never come back. So I think that whatever it is that’s causing the mindswishing is coming from there.”

“There’s no way to break it?” Allura asked.

“There is!” Lance said, brightening. “Blumfump actually did get that one right! There’s a… a chemical, I guess? That they put inside a fish and then squirt it out over your face, and if you breathe it in through your gills or nose or mouth or whatever, it ends the mindswishing! You can’t remember what happened while you were mindswished, though…”

“Are you sure?” Allura asked.

“Yeah,” Lance said, nodding. “I mean, they haven’t gotten that many people out? But everyone said they can’t remember anything after they got mindswished, and I know _I_ can’t, so—”

“Wait, you were brainwashed?” Pidge interrupted. “You didn’t mention that!”

Lance flinched a little, moving to float a little behind Hunk. “I told you _now_ …”

“We should probably focus on attacking this garden,” Shiro said. “If the timing and apparent death sentence are as suspicious as you say, then there’s a good chance that destroying it will go a long way towards stopping whatever’s going on.”

“So the queen isn’t responsible for the problem?” Keith asked, eyes on Lance. “Are you sure?”

“She didn’t start acting weird until after the garden showed up,” Lance confirmed. “I guess she _could_ be working with whatever’s causing the problem, or taking advantage of it, but… she was a good person before…”

Allura made a face, and behind her, Coran closed his eyes like he was remembering something painful. Hunk wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“She couldn’t have changed?” Keith asked. “Or been hiding it?”

Lance shook his head rapidly. “I really don’t think so.”

“How well do the lions work underwater?” Pidge asked, looking over at Allura.

“The Blue Lion should work better underwater than in the air or in a vacuum, but the others will encounter some degree of trouble,” Allura said. “Especially the Red Lion.”

Hunk wondered how hard Keith was clenching his jaw right now.

“Well, uh, Yellow didn’t seem to have _too_ much of a problem?” Hunk offered. “He had a bit of trouble maneuvering, but it wasn’t a lot? And the merfolk didn’t have any weapons that affected the lions.”

“If that’s the case,” Shiro said, “Then we’ll probably be fine unless this garden is somehow capable of attacking or brainwashing us even inside the lions. If the cure is chemical, though, then my guess is that the cause is, too, so we should be safe so long as we keep our uniforms on.”

“It’s a good uniform,” Lance said, twisting in the air again as he looked at himself. “Matches my colors.”

“Lance, do you think you could get us in contact with your friends?” Shiro asked. “So we can get our hands on that cure? I want to have some on hand, and given what you’ve said so far, I think it would be a good idea to try curing the queen before anyone else.”

“Definitely,” Lance said, nodding rapidly. “I can definitely do that.”

“Alright,” Shiro said, nodding. “In that case, let’s move out!”

o.o.o.o.o

So, the Baku Garden ended up being an actual monster that had been brainwashing merfolk to eat them.

That was… that was definitely a thing.

Hunk wasn’t sure how else to put it.

It wasn’t a hard fight, not with five lions and Blue pulling some weird sonic weapon out of her back, but it was definitely not what Hunk had been expecting.

“It was the food!” Lance crowed as he exited his lion, the others cautiously following. “The garden was _feeding_ us the mindswishing!”

“What are you _wearing?”_ The queen asked, coming closer and tracing one hand down Lance’s helmet. “Is this really necessary, Lance?”

“What? Uh, no, sorry, it’s just kinda hard to pull on and off.” Lance did, at least, pull his helmet off. He shook his head, strange blue hair floating oddly in the water. “I’ve been breathing _air_ since I left the planet!”

“How awful,” one of the mermaids drawled, coming closer and circling Lance a few times, eyeing his armor.

“Don’t start, Plaxum,” Lance pouted, crossing his arms and turning away.

“You’re the one that chose to leave without telling anyone where you were going,” another mermaid said.

“You were already mindswished, Florona! I couldn’t have told you anyway!” Lance protested, sticking his tongue out at her.

“I wasn’t,” another mermaid said, crossing her arms. Something was very, very off about her voice. “What _did_ you think you were doing?”

“Uh… getting help?” Lance said.  “Come on, Swirn, I got us something that could end the mind-swishing! Plaxum, your friends suck.”

“ _You’re_ one of my friends,” Plaxum said.

“All your friends except me,” Lance amended. “And sometimes Florona.”

“Just sometimes?” Florona asked.

“Enough, children,” the queen said, with what was probably a fond smile. Hunk wasn’t sure if alien expressions meant the same thing as human ones. He didn’t have too much time to keep thinking of an answer, because the queen turned to them next. “Hello. I am Queen Luxia. Thank you for helping my people be free of the Baku’s influence.”

Hunk watched as the trio of mermaids that Lance had been talking to swam a little ways away to talk. Plaxum hugged Florona, and then both watched as Swirn… oh, that was a hat. Or something. There had been a squid on her head.

“It was no trouble,” Shiro said. “And we owed it to Lance after he helped us find the Blue Lion, and agreed to join our team.”

Luxia turned to look at Lance. “Is that so?”

“…the spaceship likes me?” Lance said, ducking his head down and blinking back up at Luxia. “And the universe needs help?”

“What exactly is it that you do?” Luxia asked, turning back to Shiro.

“We pilot the lions of Voltron. We’re going to be fighting back the Galra Empire, and with all five lions active, we stand a much better chance of managing it than anyone else,” Shiro said. Hunk wasn’t sure if Shiro actually believed all of that, but it sounded plausible. “You saw how quickly we took out the Baku, and that was while working at a lower capacity underwater, and without even forming Voltron.”

“I see,” Luxia said quietly. “Will he be safe?”

“…no,” Shiro said. “I can’t promise that. It’s a war, not a game.”

“I’m going,” Lance said, pulling Luxia’s attention back to himself. “I know it’s going to be dangerous, especially since I’m not… not really _made_ for their spaceships, but I want to do this. I can help a lot of people with them!”

“…fine,” Luxia said, sighing. “You are old enough to make these decisions yourself, and I can’t imagine I could have stopped you.”

Lance grinned and wriggled in place a little. “Can I bring Plaxum?”

Luxia smiled, shaking her head. “Shouldn’t you ask her that yourself?”

She turned away a moment later to speak with one of her guards, who swam off in the direction of the palace almost immediately.

“Plaxum!” Lance called. She turned, and he smiled. “Come to space with me!”

She swam closer, frowning. “Why should I?”

“We’re fighting an evil government,” Lance said promptly.

“I’m in,” Plaxum said, almost before he’d finished the sentence.

“Wait, what?” Keith said, pulling gazes back towards the human paladins. “Shiro, do you know if we’re even _allowed_ to bring someone back with us?”

“I mean… it’s a big castle,” Shiro said. “But I don’t really know if there’s anything for her to do, since she’s not a pilot, and probably doesn’t have any experience with Altean tech, considering there hasn’t been any around for the last ten thousand years.”

“You’re fighting a revolution,” Plaxum said. “I want to help.”

“She’s one of the smartest people I know,” Lance insisted. “I know we don’t have any experience with your kind of tech, but she learns fast _and_ she’s really good with her throwing stars.”

Hunk was pretty sure Lance was talking about throwing starfish, which… yeah, okay. That was kind of funny.

“I mean…” Shiro trailed off, thinking. “I’m guessing it can’t do much harm? Coran and the Princess might appreciate the extra set of hands, and assuming the accommodations she needs are the same as Lance’s, it shouldn’t be too hard to double everything except the paladin armor?”

“Coran mentioned hover _chairs_ , in the plural,” Pidge said. “So yeah, there’s definitely at least that.”

“Who knows,” Hunk said. “Maybe we _can_ duplicate the paladin armor.”

“Or at least the localized anti-grav tech and thrusters,” Pidge said. “Might actually be an interesting project.”

“We could do it together,” Hunk offered. “I mean, since we’re going to need _something_ to do in between all the training. There isn’t exactly any internet or homework to distract us, right?”

“True…” Pidge mused, rubbing at his helmet’s chin.

“I guess I can’t really think of a reason to say no,” Shiro admitted. “She’ll be riding in your lion, Lance, since it’s the one with the gravity turned off in the cockpit.”

“Okay!” Lance said. “Um, I don’t think I really have anything else to—”

“Ahem,” Luxia faked a cough, which Hunk wasn’t even sure how to take. Could mermaids even cough? “I do believe you’re missing a few things.”

“Wh—oh,” Lance stared as the guard that had left earlier came back with a satchel in hand.

“Yes, I _do_ know where you’ve been keeping that drop bag of yours,” Luxia said with a smile.

“Not that you were any good at _using_ it,” Plaxum muttered.

Lance stuck his tongue out at Plaxum, and then turned back to Luxia. “Thanks, I guess.”

“You guess?” Luxia asked, sounding amused.

Lance shrugged. “I saved you from mindswishing.”

“After _I_ saved _you_ ,” Plaxum interjected.

“Enough,” Luxia said. “Lance, do you have anything else you’d like to bring with you?”

“Mm… nope!” Lance chirruped. “Plaxum?”

“I travel light,” she said.

“I guess that means we’ll be going now,” Shiro said.

“Thank you, again,” Luxia said. “All of you.”

“It was our pleasure,” Shiro assured her.

“Lance?” Luxia said. “…take care of yourself.”

Something in Lance’s face softened. “I’ll do my best.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he darted forward and hugged Luxia for a long moment. Hunk felt himself tensing up, waiting for an order to return to their lions or—or _something_ , at least. Some kind of signal.

“Bye, mom!” Lance called as he swam away from Luxia and over to the group, waving over his shoulder, with Plaxum trailing along behind him. He blinked when he met the surprised stares of the others. “What?”

“…you’re a _prince?”_ Pidge asked.

Lance made a face. “I mean… technically?”

“There’s not a lot of us,” Plaxum said. “Even less than there were, after the Baku showed up.”

“You didn’t bring this up _why?”_ Keith demanded.

“It would have been weird. And distracting. With all the mindswishing stuff,” Lance waved a hand around vaguely. “Can we go now? I already said goodbye. Staying around feels weird.”

“…let’s go,” Shiro sighed.

Hunk swam up between Lance and Plaxum as they headed back to the lions and clapped a hand on each shoulder, pulling them in tight for a hug. Sure, some things were weird right now, like Lance being royalty and Plaxum being the most _Viva la Revolución_ person he’d met since he last watched Les Mis, but they’d work things out. Actually, he had a feeling they’d both like that show… Lance seemed like the kind of guy that would like musicals, and Plaxum really _did_ seem like the kind of person—girl, girl, Lance had used she/her specifically and they’d explained the way pronouns were gendered well enough for him to know what was going on, so the translation matrix would be translating the merfolk’s non-gendered pronouns to whatever Lance interpreted the merperson to be, and seeing as Plaxum was apparently his best friend… right, right—that would absolutely love Les Mis, and—

Hunk cut off his runaway train of a thought process before it went any further, shaking his head a little and squeeze-hugging Lance and Plaxum again.

“Welcome to the team, guys,” he said. “Officially, I guess. Didn’t really have time to say that earlier.”

Lance and Plaxum exchanged looks, and then simultaneously grinned up at Hunk.

“Oh, I’m sure we’re going to have plenty of fun,” Lance said airily.

“You did say there was a war to fight,” Plaxum added.

…oh yeah, definitely interesting.

(Well, Hunk hadn’t really had a plan going in anyway. All he’d wanted to do was make sure Pidge was okay, but this was…not the worst outcome.)

(He’d work with it.)

**Author's Note:**

> I won't be continuing this.
> 
> One of the key elements when writing any minority can be summed up as such: write minorities, but do not write about being a minority unless you _are_ that minority.
> 
> In this case, a lot of what Lance (and Plaxum) would go through in the long term would circle around how the Castle is _not_ made with them in mind. They aren't bipedal creatures, and while they're both able-bodied by merfolk standards, they... aren't by Altean or human ones. As I mentioned at the top, a lot of their experiences would closely parallel what I've seen of disabled narratives, and I feel like doing that for longer than what I addressed in this fic would be in poor taste at best, since I am not part of that minority myself.
> 
> That said, if you want to adopt the fic, and you have the kind of background that would mean you can write it without falling into the mistakes that an abled person like myself would, please go ahead! Just tell me when/where you post it so I can have a read too!
> 
> The fic was inspired by this post (though not by the concept written underneath it): http://phoenixyfriend.tumblr.com/post/162392933753/fangirltothefullest-i-wanted-to-draw-merlance  
> This fic's Lance doesn't look exactly like that, but he's similar.


End file.
